Discombobulated Halloween Greetings

Flowers along the way and a plug/plea for volunteers

The flower in the last posting is part of an urban art project that involves having artists (and not taggers) paint designs on utility boxes throughout the city. That particular one is not far from Cal Western Law School.

Today's flower is a stained glass window adorning a Victorian style home in Banker's Hill. Look for more shots of flowers, wrought iron work and other bit of design inspiration to find their way into the blog from time to time.

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable" -- a good and very apt quote by birthday boy (on this date in 1908) John Kenneth Galbraith.

Last Sunday was the initial kick off of the Sharp Mary Birch Needle Arts programme. As part of the Pastoral Care Office's Arts and Healing programme.

In order to participate as a volunteer, there was orientation, TB tests and wardrobe -- ah yes, the ever attractive combo of blue polyester smock and white pants.

Still it's remarkably rewarding thing and I do hope we can grow more volunteers because the ladies are really loving the opportunity. Yes, this is a shout out for volunteers and supplies.

Student discount anyone?

I checked my application on Tuesday evening and sure enough, my status had changed again and I'm just waiting for the official piece of paper.

No, it isn't a case of degrees, collect the whole set but it has been a long time coming.

Frankly, I'm more than a little scared and a lot excited so I'm feeling pretty well grounded. If I was just excited I think I'd be a nut case. This is going to take a lot of planning and strong time management during a time when all the rest of the schedules in play are in flux.

I need to upgrade my home system with a new Linux server, a new switch/hub/router to handle 1Gig and above bandwidth while keeping the slower machines in the mix. The geek in me is very scared and excited about finally upgrading my hardware, my distro and seriously owning my config instead of just acting as caretaker and stop gap systems engineer.

Hardware is failing and stop gaps can't continue to suffice forever although every new adventure in working with my network give me more and more confidence in my abilities and less and less tolerance for the less than expert experts I've noted over the last nine years of learn as you go/must.

I also need to somehow balance my already complete lack of life -- and did I mention I recently took on a new volunteer gig that will have me busy every other Sunday that I'm not at the Whistlestop? -- with taking on yet another role when I still haven't managed to do the simple get my pattern PDFs up on Ravelry for sale.

Speaking of the Whistlestop knitting, Jen & Tony's fish baby blanket is once again in regroup/rethink mode.

Schools and schools

Onward to the grad department -- hurdle number two the MLIS express is back on track.

The nagging worry that perhaps I should start a just in case application for the Fall term and not rely on my being accepted this late in the Spring semester pool of applicants is still kicking 'round the back of my brain but I'm going to give it another week or so before I go down that path.

Meanwhile, I've other fish to knit. Lots of graph paper, lots of swatches and I'm still not quite ready to commit to a design for Jen's baby blanket.

I love this fish scale pattern stitch from Barbara Walker's 3rd Treasury but it biases like mad at least when when worked in the context of increases and decreases.

The bulk of the blanket will be knit in Berrocco's Comfort. That yarn tends to split which is annoying.

It also will not really lend itself to blocking so that's making the design a bit more of a challenge.

I'm not just going with one stitch pattern or one colour, I plan to mix in fishes of yellow, green, blue, blue print and orange along with the royal/cobalt blue background.

Some of the options also include mixing up different sizes of fish or working them in strips -- everything's on the table and alot of it is also on the design board.